


Let the Waves Up Take Me Down

by hiddencait



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, Five And One, Mermaids, Slow Build, mermaid culture and politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6987283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/pseuds/hiddencait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times a mermaid rescues Billy Bones, and one time he saves her in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is totally inspired by both Spaceportfloozy's mermaid AU photosets and Blue October's "Oceans" but somehow turned out like neither of those. I honestly am not sure what is up with this fic. It just demanded to be written.
> 
> I was going to post it all as one fic, but decided to do it in chapters to motivate myself to keep writing on it. We'll see if that works. Hope you all enjoy this!

**The Harbor**

She hadn’t intended to involve herself with the humans, but she’s been curious. Too curious according to her older sisters in the pod, but that was the way of all young mer, attracted to the strange and the unknown.

And what was stranger than the humans, tailless as they were and tied to the land above? And how could the elders not expect the young ones to wonder when each mer received the gift of human tongues when they came of age?

It was almost a tradition for the young mer to spy on the humans, just usually they did so a bit farther out from shore. But the pod had been near to a harbor, nearer than they had before in her young life. She’d slipped away from her sisters without a thought, diving down to avoid the ships leaving and entering the bay, trusting the mottled grey of her hair and dorsum to keep her hidden should a sailor glance down into the water below them.

Not that she guessed many could see beneath the surface, filthy as the water was the closer she swam to the wooden docks jutting out from the stone and shore. It was almost hard to breathe with all the muck about her, but she held her breath as best she could and trusted her gills to filter out the worst of the mess.

It would be worth a bit of discomfort if she could get a closer look at the humans. And she’d swim back out to the cleaner depths just as soon as she’d seen what she hoped to.

She made her way closer and closer, threading between keels and nets as she grew closer to her destination. Finally, the young mer reached one of the wooden docks and slipped beneath it, scowling a little as her hair snagged on the small hooks fishermen were dropping from the dock above. She untangled herself, ignoring the excited shouts that she could barely hear through the water around her as those same fishermen convinced themselves they’d caught something impressive. Her hair freed and twined into a plaited knot to keep it from getting caught a second time, she flicked her flukes to shoo away the few fish still lingering beneath the dock.

Ragged little urchins they were too, she noted, wondering idly why the fishermen bothered. Nothing worth eating would be caught in such filthy waters.

She surfaced in the space beneath the wooden docks, peering up the slight distance of barely half a tail-length to see through the crooked slats. Men who clumped about above her, now muttering furiously about “the big one” who’d stolen the bait from their hooks. The mer frowned a bit, reminding herself to comb out her hair later. There was little worse than worms twining about one’s locks. There was no time to deal with it now, especially not if they were recasting their lines again.

She’d nearly given up on the view from where she floated, when a rumble of running footsteps alerted her to the approach of some somewhat smaller humans, young ones she guessed, their voices higher and brighter than the rumble and curses of the fishermen. The children scampered about the dock, their laughter bringing an answering grin to her lips as they ran about above her, jostling each other and ducking the cuffs aimed at them by fishermen sure the commotion would scare their fish away.

At least one “fish” wasn’t going to be startled so easily.

She was eyeing one of the wooden support beams and debating on hauling herself up closer to the humans above when she actually was startled: by a splintering crash of wood, a hoarse shout of alarm, and a splash on the other side of the dock.

One of the rowdy children, a boy who at least looked similar in age to the young mer though it was hard to tell with humans, had slipped amidst their roughhousing, crashing through the rickety dock railing and falling into the sea.

Instinct had the mer ducking down to the waterline, leaving only her eyes above the surface, watching as the boy would surely swim himself to safety.

Only he didn’t. Gamely though he clearly tried to thrash about, the boy clearly knew nothing of how to actually swim. Nor apparently did the other boys or the adults above. There were shouts and calls for help for a “William,” but no other splashes to signal any humans coming to the gangly boy’s rescue.

And he was slipping beneath the surface even as she watched.

Instinct had nothing to do with what the mer chose next. She spared a brief thought for the wrath of her Matriarch and Wise One should they learn of her actions, and another brief moment to decide she’d not be the one to bring it up, and then she dove under. Her tail propelled her forward in two hard strokes to cross the distance between them, and she wrapped her arms about the boy from behind, hoping he might miss her true identity in his panic. Then with another pair of tail kicks, she dragged the boy backwards toward the metal ladder at the land-side end of the dock.

She surfaced to the sound of a great gasp of air from the boy and a resumption of his flailing. This time his hands found the ladder, and she ducked back into the shadows of the doc, hoping the commotion and the dimness would keep her hidden.

As the boy climbed haphazardly, clothes sopping and shoes slipping against the railings, she could not help but hiss at him: “Learn to swim, you fool!”

She resolved not to mention that to her elders, either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is years before the young mer sees the boy again.

**Impressment**

Years and miles of water had passed when she saw the boy again. A territory dispute with an Irish selkie rookery had sent her pod migrating south and west across an ocean, seeking the warmer waters and cooler tempers their Matriarch hoped they would find. The new pods and schools of mer they encountered were mostly welcoming as the aquatic flora and fauna were plentiful in the new climes. Territories were, for the most part, a barely acknowledged thing, utterly different from the harsh boundaries of the northern waters.

The frenzies were an unwelcome change, shark teethed mer rarely travelling as groups in the pod’s native waters. Still, the frenzies carried a few weaknesses: they formed based on convenience instead of any true cooperation, and there were no Wise Ones among them, no magick wielders capable of calling upon the Ocean herself and of working the glamours that were so vital to keeping the mer hidden from the human world. Her pod had a Wise One; her pod nearly had two, with the young mer herself being newly trained as an apprentice.

The few frenzies who dared to challenge the recently immigrated pod met fierce defense and fled the conflict with far fewer mer than they’d attacked with. The pod lost only three, though those three were mourned as all their sisters were.

The young mer herself grew farther from her sisters in her grief, venturing further and further from the pod, seeking distance both emotional and physical from the agony of those losses she could not prevent. Her forays took her all throughout the island waters they now inhabited, learning by rote the harbors and ports of the human kind, and the paths their ships cut through the water. It was a lonely adventure, but it was the only that offered her any peace from the images of her sisters torn limb from limb by the teeth and bloodlust of the frenzies.

The young mer spent the rest of her time continuing her studies with their Wise One, hoping one lesson or the next from her mentor might grant her the ability to save her sisters when the next conflict arrived.

To her surprise, the Wise One encouraged her solitude, urging her to voyage farther from the pod and more among the humans. “We must know their ways, young one, must know them well in order to protect our charges from them. And too, they may aid us in ways we do not expect. Drawn as you are so strongly to them, the Ocean must will it so. Who am I to question Her will? Just return to me, child, return and tell me of your travels.”

So the young mer did, often finding herself again lurking beneath docks and listening to the many languages of the two legged creatures, sinking into the Wise One’s gift of tongues to grant her understanding of all their different words, and of the meaning sometimes hidden beneath those words.

They were war-like beings, the human males of these wild islands. Hunters, fierce and near as blood thirsty as the frenzies that stalked the waters below their ships. Some hunted more skillfully than others, but all made the Ocean their home almost as truly as the young mer did.

Though not all were as at home there as their fellows.

The day she found her boy again, she trailed a ship that even she could see was foolishly directed. She had studies many such ships, trying to puzzle out the patterns in their sails and banners, hoping to discover the code that might tell her sisters which were safe to travel near and which might attack the dolphins their glamour made them appear to be.

The captain of this ship did not seem to read the wind or the tides as well as many others. From what the mer could tell, the sails aloft were nowhere near where they should be to properly guide the ship below. If anything, the sails were straining against the gusts, masts and lines tensing and slacking again and again as the winds blown wild by a distant storm shoved against the sails over and over. If the captain didn’t change their course…

Part of her wanted to turn away, to leave the vessel to whatever disaster their incompetent captain was sure to lead them to, but another sense deep within her compelled her closer. The mer didn’t know why, but this ship now canting at a mad angle drew her focus, and kept her near as if it holding something of vital importance.

She slipped closer, certain now that the wind would win the stalemate between it and the sails. Sure enough, there came an eerie creak as the ship tipped even farther, and then a sickening snap as one of the smaller masts finally gave way to the force of the wind, falling to the deck of the ship with a crash, sending debris and men flying off overboard.

She should not have recognized him as more than another figure falling, falling down to the waves. He was taller than she remembered her boy to be, frame and limbs near as long as those of her kind and finally matched to the size of his hands and feet. But he was so thin, so much thinner that she remembered seeing a human man to be, and bound about his ankles were the clanking metal of shackles.

No, she should not have recognized this man. But as her eyes laid upon him, she felt again that strange tug in her chest and then a certainty that this, indeed, was the boy she’d saved years before.

The mer was diving before she knew she’d decided to do so, forcing speed and power in a mad dash to save her human again. It took only a blink to pick him out from the other sinking sailors, his tall form thrashing, straining to make his way back towards the surface. Her human would not die easy, she saw and felt a fierce strange pride at the thought. She streaked down behind him, risking the glamour to wrap her arms about his torso. He stilled in surprise, and the mer took advantage of his lack of struggle to push towards the surface, tail kicking hard against the water’s drag. He was heavier than his thin appearance might have indicated, and she worked against the weight, knowing she’d be sore from her exertions later.

They broke the surface, and he gasped for air, still limp against her hold. The mer looked about them then made for a length of the broken mast that floated nearby, shoving her human against it until his arms finally reached out to pull himself upon it as best he could.

She turned away then, panic at discovery suddenly crashing over her like one of the waves around them, but his voice halted her flight before she can sink beneath the surface again. “Wait – the others. Please. Some of them don’t know how to swim even without the shackles to weigh them down.”

The mer looked over her shoulder to see him staring straight at her as he clung to the bit of mast. Glamour or not, it was clear he saw her, saw the mer and not the dolphin she pretended to be.

“Please,” he said again, eyes steady and filled with a painful hope.

Despite her instincts screaming for her to flee, despite all the Matriarch’s warnings that humans should never, ever, look upon one of their kind, it was that hope that sent her diving down once more, down towards the other sailors sinking fast.

There weren’t many – the mast had thrown perhaps a dozen clear of the ship, including her human. Less than half still lived, struggling to fight the weight of their shackles as he had. Those no longer fighting she knew to be already lost, their air long escaped in bubbles to the surface. She let their bodies sink, hoping he would forgive her for the loss. The others, though, those still kicking and reaching with all they had left, those she dove for, pulling them to the surface and to bits of debris one after the other, until none of the few survivors still struggled for breath beneath the waves.

Though the rescue had taken only mere moments, she ached from the effort, exhausted from the speed with which she’d dove, as well as with the strain of her glamour and the weight of the men. After she breached the surface with the final survivor and ferried him to his floating platform, she found herself drawn tiredly back to the mast with her human.

He’d watched the rescues one by one, calling out to the other men and whispering words of encouragement quiet enough for only her to hear as she went about the rescues he’d asked of her. When she reached him, she let herself cling to the side of the mast, resting her sore muscles and gulping in air to aid her gills and lungs.

“No more of them,” he said quietly, no question in his voice about the fate of the others.

She shook her head slowly. “No, the others no longer breathed.”

“Thank you, for saving as many as you could.” Up close, with the beat of stillness tempting her to linger, she was able to see his solemn eyes clearly for the first time, bright and Ocean blue against his tanned skin. He smiled sadly as he looked her over in return. “I knew you were real. I never told anyone. Not that they would have believed me.”

“Few would. It keeps us safe.” The words tripped at her tongue, harsh on her throat and gills as the mer language never was.

“I imagine it does.” He glanced away, eyes going to the ship in the distance and the launches that had finally been lowered and were returning to rescue their fallen crew. “Looks like it’s time for you to go, then,” he said, looking regretful to see her leave. “I’m Billy by the way.”

“Billy,” she said softly. “I will see you again.”

It was a promise she shouldn’t keep, but one she knew she couldn’t resist making.


End file.
